Learning Chinese language is not easy for beginners; even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated and wasting a lot of time. So a better way is to learn those materials with annotations.

Steps

1

Read the material with the help of marks and hints and try your best to understand the meaning.

During your reading, pay attention to the "sentence structure" and "phrases and idioms" which are perhaps the most difficult thing in Mandarin Chinese, but the annotations make them easier for the learners.

Please note: your aim is to get the knowledge or information, so don't worry so much about the details. The key here is to grasp most of the material and get the basic meaning. It's OK if you miss small points!

2

Listen to the mp3 file of the text as many times as possible.

After you have read through the text and comprehend most of it, then listen to the MP3 file of the text. Firstly, you can look at the text (pay attention to the pinyin) while listening; then, listen without looking at text until you can identify each word and sentence.

It needs some patience and repetition here. You must listen to the lessons as many times as possible.

3

Discard the material and Learn the core "words, phrases and idioms" by text and mp3 file.

After you have worked on the text and mp3 file, you have gotten the essence of material - the knowledge and information. It seems it's ok now to discard the material into the trash, but there are two very important points here, first you can store the knowledge for later reference if you think it is important for you; secondly, remember that you just learnt the material under the help of hints, you have to bear in mind these core "words, phrases and idioms" to read by yourself in the future. (Please note, these "words, phrases and idioms" are limited! They are absolutely worth learning and repeating as many times as possible in a day. When you have known these core words, you will be able to read all articles in Chinese)

When you are learning these core "words, phrases and idioms" by fast listening, you can put the emphasis on Pinyin (Phonetic Alphabet) and Characters at the same time until you can recall what the pinyin and English meaning are when you see a character. No need to know the writing of the character at the beginning! Do not try to write the character, because it will be hard for beginners, and knowing how to write is not essential for you to read Chinese article. (Please note that it is not necessary for you to be able to write each character, you can use pinyin software to type out)

4

If you like, you can imitate what you hear to practise your pronunciation.

Try to imitate what you hear, even if the sounds seem to be difficult to pronounce. Remember that even if you make mistakes and your accent is not "standard", you will still be understood by Chinese people easily. So speak loud and have confidence in yourself!

Record yourself and compare your pronunciation to the mp3 file. It always helps when you hear your own voice like it’s somebody else.